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MR. JAY'S LETTER 



ON THE RECENT 



KELINQUISHMENT OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 



Dr. H. Edmund J, Koch, 

Chairman of the Ex. Com. of Adopted Citizens, dr. 
Sir : I cordially thank yonr Committee for the honor they 
have done me in asking my assistance at the meeting, on the 
31st instant, "for the pnrpose of snpporting our Go^^ernment ^, 
in reaffirming the Monroe doctrine, and for a strict execution ! 
of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln by the 
military and civil authorities of the United States." The un- 
conditional loj^alty and love of country that characterize your 
preamble and resolutions command my heartiest ajiproval.' 

Amid the excitement caused by domestic rebellion we have 
permitted the Government, without public remonstrance, to 
drift from its ancient moorings in reference to European influ- 
ence on the American continent ; and now that the determina- 
tion and the ability of the American people to restore in its 
completeness the national unity, the national integrity, and the 
national supremacy, are, as we believe, definitely settled, it is 
proper that we should recall our olden principles, and take 
care that, in our intercourse with foreign powers, there be no 
relinquishment of our rightful claims, no yielding to for- 
eign pretensions in derogation of our honor or our rig^its. Let 
me add, that no class of our people are better fitted'^to appre- 
ciate the importance of preserving unimpaired the Monroe 
doctrine in reference to the neighboring territorv of Mexico 



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and the Antilles than our adopted fellow-citizens of European 
birth. ]^or has the discussion of the question which you have 
introduced been commenced a moment too soon. The National 
Intelligencer, at Washington, has, within the last few days, made 
the startling announcement that the Monroe doctrine " no 
longer exists, save as a presidential precedent, which Congress 
declined to endorse ;" and the recent diplomatic correspond- 
ence of the State Department shows, with the utmost frankness, 
that, in the part we have acted towards Mexico, when attacked 
by the triple alliance of England, France, and Spain, the Mon- 
roe doctrine has been as completely ignored as though it had 
never received the sanction of American statesmen nor the 
hearty approval of the American people. 

The Monroe doctrine embraced tliese three points : first, 
that the American continents, in view of the free and inde- 
pendent condition they have assumed, ought not to be consid- 
ered as subjects of future colonization by any European power ; 
next, that we should consider any attempt by those powers to 
extend their system to this hemisphere as dangerous to our 
safety ; and, lastly, that we could not view any interposition 
by European powers for oppressing the American Governments, 
or controlling, in any manner, their destiny, in any other light 
than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards 
the United States. 

I believe that, so far as the North American continent is 
concerned, and esi^ecially that part of it that lies between Texas 
and the Isthmus, the Monroe doctrine, as thus declared, in all 
three of its points, is approved by an overwhelming majority 
of the loyal citizens of our Republic. 

]^ow, what has been the course of our Government in re- 
gard to the triple armed expedition against Mexico ? It appears, 
from a letter of Mr. Dayton, dated June 5, 1862, that he had 
been forbidden even to demand an explanation of its aim and 
object, but simply to say that our Government would be happy 
to receive such explanations if voluntarily tendered. Upon 
this polite announcement, Mr. Tliouvenel volunteered explana- 
tions to this efteet: that the French troops did not go to Mexico 
to interfere with the existing form of Government, nor to ac- 



^ 



^" quire an inch of territorv, nor to remain indefinitely in the 
(^ country ; and, thereupon, Mr. Dayton was advised from Wash- 
ington that " Mr. Thouvenel's assurances were eminently satis- 
factory to the Pi-esident." 

Even then there were waiiiings that might have modified 
that eminent satisfaction. Mr. Dayton frankly declared that 
it would be difficult to reconcile the published opinions of the\^ 
commissioners of the three powers with those declarations of 
the French Government; and our minister to Mexico, Mj^-Cor^ 
win, had written, on the 24th March, 1862, expressing his fears 
that if the allies should take the field to establish a govei'innent, 
or it they should get control of the public lauds, " Mexico would 
thenceforth be an European colony." 

Now recall the fact, patent to the whole world, that the inevit- 
able result of the joint attack on Mexico, if not its evident in- 
tent, must be to control in some manner its destiny ; and apply 
to that fact the language of President Monroe, that we could 
not view such an interposition on the part of any European 
power "" in any other light than as the manifestation of an un- 
friendly disposition towards the United States ;" and it would 
seem as if these words, nttered in 1823, had been spoken in di- 
rect reference to the jiresent emergency ; for after England and 
Spainhad retired from thealliance — with what degree of fairness, 
of honor, or of glory, it is not now necessary to inquire — the 
French Emperor, writing from Fontainebleau, on the 3d of 
July, 1862, to General Forey, gave him his explanation of the 
matter, which difters materially from those which, when given 
by Mr. Thouvenel to Mr. Dayton, were so eminently satisfac- 
tory at "Washington. TheEnq^eror says : " We have an inter- 
est in this — that the republic of the United States be powerful 
and prosperous; but we have none in this — that she should 
seize possession of all the Mexican Gulf, dominate from thence 
the Antilles, as well as South America, and be the sole dis- 
penser of the products of the New World." 

Here we have, somewhat late in the day, but expressed 
with admirable distinctness, one, at least, of the motives of the 
French Emperor ; and however excellent an argument may 
be made to prove his right to feel an interest in the future of 



this continent, and to exert his skill and his power to circum- 
scribe the boundaries and limit the influence of the American 
republic, it is clear, without any argument at all, that the 
scheme of Louis ISTapoleon, now being carried out in Mexico, 
without, so far as we know, one word of remonstrance from 
the State Department, is a matter of the profoundest interest 
to the American people, and especially to those of them who 
believe that when this rebellion is crushed and slavery abol- 
ished there is before us a career of national greatness and 
prosperity that may gather to us, not by war and conquest, but 
of their own accord and by the attraction of self-interest, the 
territories that adjoin us on the north and on the south, and 
make us more completely than at present an ocean-girt re- 
public. 

From a diplomatic correspondence with Mexico, not long 
since published in our newspapers, it would appear that at that 
time Mexico thought she had reason to complain, not of a 
want of friendly sympathy, but of much more than that — of a 
/ disregard of impartial neutrality ; that she complained that 
'^ we were permitting the French Emperor to ship warlike stores 
from New York to assist him in the conquest of her territory, 
in dereliction of the very principles which we had complained 
that England had violated toward ourselves. 

Whether these complaints of Mexico were in any respect 
well founded, I do not know; but the fact that such complaints 
were warmly urged seemed to indicate that our position in 
regard to her invasion by France has been one, at least, of cold 
indiiference. 

If such indiiference had been the imperative result of our 
own exigencies in regard to the rebellion, the American people 
\^/ might be justly content that the welfare of our own republic 
should not be hazarded by an ill-timed adherence to the 
Monroe doctrine at a critical moment. But this idea is con- 
tradicted by the fact that, while the preparations of the triple 
alliance were being made, repeated assurances were given by 
the State Department to our ministers abroad, that "the end of 
the war was in sight ; " that " there would be a short and rapid 
series of successes over a disheartened conspiracy, and then all 



would be over." And the very letter (April 22, 1862) that con- 
veyed to Mr. Dayton the satisfaction of the Government at the 
assurances of Mr. Thouvenel, advised him of the most gratify- 
ing indications of the early restoration of the peace of the 
country. 

Mr. Dayton had been recently assured also by the Secretary, 
on the 26th March, that " Charleston cannot long hold out, and 
the fall of Savannah is understood to be a question of days, not 
of weeks. Mobile cannot stand after the fall of these and I^ew 
Orleans." 

It is clear from these reiterated assurances, enforced as they 
were by elaborate reviews of our military position, that the 
standard of our nationality was not lowered, that the Monroe 
doctrine was not given to the winds, and that Mr. Dayton was 
not forbidden to demand explanations of the meaning of the 
expedition against Mexico from any real conviction on the part 
of the Secretary that the necessities of our position com- 
pelled lis to don the mantle of humility, and to advise Louis 
ISTapoleon, Avith bated breath, that we awaited in silence his im- 
perial pleasure, and would receive with gladness such explana- 
tions as he might be pleased to offer. The explanations he con- 
descended to give, which did not satisfy our minister — the 
eminent satisfaction they afforded at "Washington, notwith- 
standing the fears of Mr. Corwin — and the real explanation as 
subsequently given by the Emperor to Gen. Forey — constitute 
a page in our history which, happily, is without a precedent in 
the past, and should be without a counterpart in the future. 

The Monroe doctrine does not imply, as some seem to sup- 
fjose, any interference with the just rights of foreign powers, 
but simply a due regard to our national welfare. Our honor- 
able and gallant fellow-citizen, Gen. Clay, whose bravery in 
the defence of free speech in Kentucky in olden times will al- 
ways command admiration, recommended, in a well-known 
diplomatic letter, published by the State Department — a letter 
in which some passages were omitted, but this recommendation 
carefully retained — that " money and men should be sent into 
Ireland, India, and all the British dominions all over the world, 
to stir up revolt," &c. 



6 

Of such a recommendation, notwithstanding the significant 
sanction it then received by its official promulgation, and not- . 
withstanding the yet more significant sanction it has very re- 
cently received in his reappointment, I believe the American 
people, almost to a man, will disapprove, as in utter violation 
of the Laws of Nations, and at variance with the dignity and 
the princijDles of a Christian people. But a recognition of 
the Monroe doctrine involves no such grievous wrong to a 
foreign nation to be secretly inflicted in time of peace ; it re- 
quires only an open and honorable avowal of principles that 
for forty years have been regarded as a component part of 
American policy, and which we believe cannot now^ be surren- 
dered, as they have been in the case of France and Mexico, 
without a diminution of our national dignity, and a derogation 
from that international respect which we have been accustomed 
to command in Europe. 

It is the aim of the rebel sympathizers in our midst — of the 
party that has adopted the name and the symbol of Copper- ■ 
heads — to impair and destroy, as far as possible, that pride of 
nationality which, from the birth of our republic, Americans 
have been taught to cherish. How completely they have suc- 
ceeded in extinguishing all pride of country and every senti- 
ment of honor in their own breasts, has been disclosed to-day 
in the remarkable letter of Lord Lyons. The leaders of the 
Peace Democrats in I^ew^ York gathered around the aristocratic 
representative of the British Government, not to i3rotest against 
the burning of American ships by English pirates, but to in- 
voke his lordship's assistance in a plot for foreign intervention 
in our domestic afi'airs, anticipating the humiliation and dis- 
memberment of the republic. Well may the Southern rebels, 
waging open wai' against the Government, recoil with scorn 
from the mean treachery of their cowardly allies at the North ! 
But it becomes the Administration, in view of so pitiable an 
exhibition of American degeiieracy, to maintain with the more 
earnest fideliiy, at home and abroad, that high national tone 
which befits the dignity of a nation, the brightness of whose 
career, temporarily checked by internal treachery and what is 
now termed " foreign neutrality," will yet culminate in a 
splendor that shall indicate to the world the star of empire. 



I have left myself, sir, no room to touch upon the other 
topic of your meeting— the President's Emancipation Policy— 
upon wliicli I will only remark that I doubt the expediency of 
discussing it. With or without the Proclamation, in a war 
waged by slavery against the life of the nation, slavery was 
bound to die, in accordance with the warning once eloquently 
given by Mr. Seward when, admitting that, under tlie bond of 
the Constitution, it was entitled to its pound of flesh, he de- 
clared that, if it drew one drop of blood, its life was forfeit. 

IsTot by single drops, nor on a single battle-field, but from 
the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the Potomac to the 
Rio Grande, has slavery shed, in torrents, the life-blood of our 
best and bravest. I agree with Mr. Seward that its life is for- 
feit and that slavery must die. With that conviction, clearly 
foreseen and warningly declared by many slaveholders in ad- 
vance of the rebellion as its inevitable result, I am content, 
without caring to discuss the questions raised by sympathizers 
with rebellion, upon the terms of the Proclamation. 

Tens and hundreds of thousands of our brave soldiers are 
fighting to preserve the life of the republic, and the peace and 
prosperity of their children's children ; and although in our 
opinion, and in that of Southern statesmen before the war 
beo-an, " the end will be abolition," it is a wicked device 
of our enemies to pretend that abolition is the object of 
the war. I am aware that this doctrine, although absolutely 
refuted by the President in his Messages and in his letter to 
Mr. Greeley, has been apparently sanctioned by the oflicial ut- 
terances of Mr. Thurlow Weed, who, while a commissioner in 
Europe, accredited from the State Department, is reported to 
have said, in London, so long since as 3d February, 1862 : 

" As to the prospects of the future, the Admistration not 
only desired, but expected, emancipation as the fruit and result 
of the war ; slavery was and w^ould be burned out of every acre 
and rood of territory conquered from the rebels, so that, by pro- 
cess of war and by legal enactments, if the United States Gov- 
ernment were successful, slavery would cease to exist." 

Such utterances, although made with liigh official sanction, 
are calculated to mislead the people, and seem— without, as I 



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believe, the shadow of justice — to convict the President of insin- 
cerity, by intimating that a desire for emancipation was influ- 
encing his conduct of the war for long months prior to the 
adoption of the Proclamation as a matter of pure military ne- 
cessity. The war is prosecuted by the President in fulfillment 
of his Constitutional oath to preserve the unity and enforce the 
laws of the republic*; and if, when our national integrity is 
restored, it shall be found that slavery has received its deatli 
blow, we need not seek for the cause of its overthrow in the 
cabinet of Mr. Lincoln, but recognize tlie truth proclaimed, in 
1850, by the Hon. Mr. Boyce, of South Carolina, that if the 
slaveholders should secede from the Union the institution of 
slavery would be doomed, and that the great God, in their 
blindness, would have made them, the instruments of its destruc- 
tion. 

I have the honor to be, sir, 

Your most obedient servant, 

JOH^T j^Y. 

194: Fifth Avenue, | 

:>^Ew YoEK, March 30, 1863. f 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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